How to Homebrew an IPA That's Worth Drinking

It takes some practice, but keeps these tips in mind so you can create an IPA to rival the very best.

Nick Gingold

By
matt allyn

Want to enjoy the big, hoppy IPA that beer nerds will stand in lines for hours to buy? Just brew one at home!

It's a little more complicated than brewing a cup of joe, but it's entirely possible to create rich, hugely satisfying hop creations in your kitchen. For guidance on both the bone-dry West Coast IPAs and thick, hazy New England IPAs, we reached out to several of the world's best brewers to get some inside tips on making your own brew.

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If you need more basic instruction on making beer, check out PM's guide to brewing. But if you've got at least a few batches under your belt, follow this expert advice and make some of best IPAs you'll ever taste.

Keep Out the Oxygen

The basic premise for a great IPA seems simple. First you make a pale ale, the toss in a tons of hops. But despite what looks like an easy formula, it's actually one of the hardest beers to get right, says Travis Smith, brewmaster at San Diego's Societe Brewing. A great IPA starts with solid brewing practices. The world's choicest hops can't make an impact if they're ruined by the time they hit your pint glass. "Imperfections in your process will stand out more because hop character is one of the first things to degrade when beer is mistreated," explains Smith.

The biggest brewing mistake, mentioned by all our experts, was exposing your beer to oxygen. Though a beer gobbles up oxygen during fermentation—which along with sugar creates alcohol—once the yeast stops converting it, oxygen spoils beer and breaks down hop oils, aka the good stuff.

Firestone Walker brewmaster Matt Brynildson recommends that when it's time to transfer your beer out of the primary fermenter, whether to a secondary fermenter, bottling bucket, or keg, purge the vessel with CO2 first to remove oxygen. "Also purge while you dry hop," he adds, referring to the extra and essential step of adding hops to the fermenter.

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Joe Grimm, co-founder of Grimm Artisanal Ales, suggests that homebrewers avoid a secondary fermenter all together to avoid oxidation. If you want to dry hop, add them toward the end of primary fermentation, he says, with one- or two-degree brix remaining before hitting terminal gravity. "A homebrewer's best, most low-tech weapon against oxygen is active yeast," Grimm says.

Though many homebrewers believe yeast creates a protective layer of CO2 (a byproduct of brewing) over their beer, Grimm says that idea is a complete myth. "It implies a stable stratification of CO2 below air, whereas in reality all the gases tend to mix."

Matt Brynildson, brewmaster at Firestone Walker.

Nick Gingold

Don't Taste the Barley

In a big, hops-focused IPA, the barley should only provide fermentable sugar, not aroma or flavor. "Pale malt is all you need," says Brynildson, referring to the relatively muted malted barley brewers commonly use as the base malt of their recipes. Likewise, Nate Lanier, head brewer at Tree House Brewing says of his IPAs, "we use just pale malt as 95 percent of our grist in several beers." Brynildson, however, likes even less specialty grains in his IPAs, "Very small additions of cara-malt are okay, but keep it under 2.5 percent of the grist bill."

And if you want to brew a dry, light-bodied IPA like the West Coast-style Brynildson crafts, he further suggests mashing your grains at a lower temperature. That's 150-152F for a single-step mash or, if you want to follow Brynildson's brewhouse program, 145F for 30 minutes, 155F for 15, and then mashing out at 168-172F. This leaves few unfermentable barley sugars that would add body and flavor.

Hold Onto Your Hops Until the End

Simcoe hops

Getty ImagesChris Ratcliffe

To maximize the flavor and aroma from your hops, our experts agree that they should almost all be added at the very end of your boil and in your fermenters. The bittering hops added at the start of the boil play an important role in making a well rounded beer, says Smith, "but this shouldn't be the focus." Overall, Smith recommends building an IPA recipe with 1.5 to 2 ounces of hops per gallon of beer.

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Buy Fresh, In-Season Hops

Every brewer also stressed the importance of freshness when selecting hops. "Just like a chef will tell you, you can't make great food without great ingredients, the same goes for making a great IPA," says Brynildson. When buying hops from a homebrew store, he says, make sure they've been stored cold and vacuum-sealed to keep out oxygen.

Always buy hops from the most recent crop, adds Brynildson. In northern hemisphere, hops are harvested August through September. That's bad news if you're brewing in July. However, Brynildson suggests getting in sync with the southern hemisphere hop harvest (Australia and New Zealand are two big producers), which takes place in February and March.

Adding simcoe hops to a homebrew.

Getty ImagesChad Springer

Dry Hop Your Fermentation

Grimm describes his hazy IPAs as delicate and tropical, a tasty contrast to the sharper West Coast style. A big difference, he says, comes from dry-hopping during primary fermentation. "The contact with the yeast will involve bio-transformations that develop softer, fruitier hop character."

Every yeast strain interacts differently with hops, but Tom Nielsen, Sierra Nevada Brewing's manager of raw material development and quality, says the brewery's house ale strain is an excellent choice for primary dry hopping. You can buy it yeast supplier White Labs, who labels it WLP001 California Ale, or competitor Wyeast, who calls it 1056 American Ale.

Build a Blend

Few hop varieties can make a great IPA by themselves, says Smith. "Most benefit from being used in conjunction with other varieties." His favorite hop combinations include Simcoe with Amarillo and Centennial, Chinook with Simcoe, Citra with Columbus, and Mosaic with "just about anything." However, there are few hard rules or guides for how to blend hops varieties. "This is where the art of the brewer, and not so much science comes into play, it is something that you learn from experience"